Half-Sick of Shadows (32 page)

I knew that what had been had to be and what would be would be. Blissful powerlessness.

Gregory came out from the kitchen – presumably for a smoke because Sophia complained when he smoked inside – as I approached the back door. Startled at seeing me, he said, ‘I thought you’d be out all night.’

‘I didn’t say I’d be out all night.’

‘I know, but …’

‘Is something wrong?’ He looked like he’d seen a new ghost.

‘No,’ he said. To my surprise he offered me a cigarette.

We smoked cigarettes at the back door.

‘I’m going to burn down the Manse,’ I said.

Like, it’s for the best, he said, ‘Yeah.’

I had either murdered Mrs Wipple or been responsible for her death. Manslaughter involves, I think, killing without malice aforethought. Therefore, I might have been guilty of manslaughter – or, in Mrs Wipple’s case, woman-slaughter – for I never had malice in mind: not in aforethought, not in contemporaneous thought, and not in afterthought. I have always been, and remain, malice free; a touch unsympathetic perhaps, but completely without enmity.

If I had not caused the Wipple woman to take flight from me she might not have fallen; indeed, she might have taken flight from the Manse in a different direction. I did, it’s true, hold her under the water, but she was probably dead already and my action served only to conceal that which I’m sure no one could have the slightest wish to look at – there are concealed bodies enough rotting around the Manse without one rotting fully exposed.

Although I did not want to do what I did to Mrs Wipple, we found ourselves there, and I did it without premeditation.

In time, I am sure, I will come to believe that our lives are predetermined. We think we have choices, and act as if we do. But of the options we think we have all but one are ghosts, and that one is the one we must take. I did what I did because, in the infinity of options, I could do nothing else.

I have always tried to be good, but appear to have failed as often as I appear to have succeeded. ‘Appear’ is the significant word. When I have been good, I have been so by accident. When I have been bad, I have been so through no wicked impulse of my own. Whether good or bad, then, I am nothing. I have made no decisions. I have made no impression on the world. I am a footprint on Hollow Heath on a snowy day. More snow has fallen and covered me. I did not ask the snow to fall and I cannot make it stop. Sophia cannot understand. I have no one to tell about the way I feel. I feel as though I am the message in a bottle that no one will ever read. Everything started to rot years ago, and rots still. Maybe there is nothing but rot.

I suffered deeper depression than I had previously known following the dispatch of Wipple. But what can one do? One cannot undo the past. I toughed out the depression caused by the bad thing, unaware that a worse thing was imminent.

25

Edgar Comes Home

With a cup of tea on my lap and one leg dangling over a chair arm, I settled to Alf’s book of poetry. I turned to the scruffy-edged poem:
The Lady of Shalott
, by Tennyson. That’s the one that Sophia recited, and, in so doing, made me yawn mightily.

Sophia appeared in the doorway and said someone was at the Manse’s back door. ‘Who?’ I asked. She didn’t know. I went to resolve the mystery and found a rotund police constable with his cap under an arm. There was a police car behind him and an officer inside it.

Wipple! It must be Wipple. She survived the Hole and went to the police. No. She couldn’t possibly have survived the Hole. Not Wipple, then. The body in the bog! The police couldn’t touch me for the body in the bog; I hadn’t killed her.

‘Yes?’ came from my mouth as it dropped open.

‘I was hoping to speak to Mr Pike senior.’

‘He’s indisposed.’ My mouth was very dry. ‘What is it?’

‘Is he at home?’

‘He can’t speak to you; he’s too ill.’

‘Your mother?’

‘They’re both too ill. How can I help you?’

‘I’m afraid I have some bad news …’

I saw a moped, a ditch, a body face down, and felt mightily
relieved
. I’d happily bury Gregory in the shallow grave where Tennyson used to be before Mother binned him. The officer mistook my sagging shoulders for a near faint.

‘Would you like to sit down, sir?’

I didn’t want him in the kitchen. ‘I’m all right.’

‘There’s been a road accident …’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s just …’ He choked. Swallowed. Policing was probably a bad career choice. I thought he was going to cry. ‘I’ve never done this kind of thing before. I don’t know how to say it.’

Just my luck to get a wimp.

‘Would you like me to guess?’ I asked.

He shook his head: a negative.

‘I’ll guess. You can nod yes or no.’

The officer whimpered, biting his lips, nodding his head with a single teardrop in the corner of one eye.

‘There’s been an accident involving my brother.’ Whimper – him, not me. Nod. Nod. ‘My brother Gregory.’ Shake. Shake. Whimper. ‘Not involving Gregory, but my brother none the less.’ Nod. Nod. Sniff. ‘Edgar. It’s my brother Edgar.’ Nod. Nod.

‘There’s been an accident involving my brother Edgar.’

The officer pulled himself together. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mr Edgar Pike … lost his life. He’s dead, that is.’

The officer continued to speak. I heard what he said, but his voice came from far away. Edgar’s body had been taken to a hospital. The medics there did exactly the same as the ambulance medics had done on the motorway: they acknowledged that Edgar was dead.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

He’d just told me what happened, but I was in shock.

‘It looks like a hit and run,’ said the officer. ‘I mean, we have the vehicle belonging to whoever hit him. But the driver ran.’

‘Edgar died, but the driver suffered no injury,’ said a voice that came out of me, angry at the injustice of it.

‘Yes. Er … How do you mean?’ asked the officer, presumably because of my angry, or possibly just puzzled, tone of voice.

‘You can’t run away if you’re injured.’ I looked over my shoulder to see if Sophia was listening, but she must have gone upstairs. How would I break the news of Edgar’s death to her? How would I break it to Mother? ‘Where is he now?’ I asked.

‘Like I said, he ran away.’

‘I mean Edgar, my brother.’

‘Oh, we’ve got him all right; he’s at the mortuary. We need someone to identify the body. You, sir, if that’s all right. If you could pull on a coat and come with us now.’

‘Mmm,’ I said, but my mind was elsewhere, everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. ‘What’s the car like?’

‘That’s it,’ he said, turning to the police car.

‘I mean the car that hit Edgar.’

‘It’s drivable.’ The officer juggled a scenario briefly. ‘I mean, it’s drivable now the smashed window’s been removed. That’ll be why the driver didn’t escape in the car: couldn’t see out. Your brother’s head landed on the windscreen: splat! I mean, not his head by itself, the rest of him was there too. But don’t you worry, sir. We’ll trace the vehicle’s owner, and you’ll have your man in no time. Or woman.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Unless the vehicle was stolen, in which case it might take a bit longer.’

‘I’ll get my coat.’

Sophia was upstairs with Mother. I entered Mother’s bedroom and Sophia looked at me without speaking.

‘I’ve got to go out for a while, but I won’t be long.’

‘What is it?’ asked Sophia.

‘It’s nothing to worry about. Nothing any of us can do anything about. I’ll tell you when I come back.’

‘How long will you be?’

‘Not long,’ I said, although I had no idea how long I would be.

Sophia stayed with Mother. Gregory was farting around the
countryside
on his vacuum cleaner. The drive in the police car to the hospital lasted two hours. The hospital was somewhere I had never heard of and had never been before.

Identifying Edgar in the mortuary lasted a couple of minutes. Half of his face was cut and grazed. The other half was missing. He’d put on some weight since last time I saw him. Other than that, he looked just like himself but bluer. They’d traced him to the institution, apparently because of documents on his person – probably his release certificate. The institution directed them to the Manse.

The drive back to the Manse – I felt less like I was under arrest driving back – lasted the same amout of time as the drive from it, but passed more quickly.

The night was very dark when I returned. I asked the officers to drop me at the top of the Lane; I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. They nodded their heads, pretending to empathize with my grief. The truth was that I dreaded the thought that the hump of Mrs Wipple’s corpse would appear, floating in the Hole, silver under moonlight.

‘I came out without my cigarettes,’ I said, before getting out of the police car. ‘You couldn’t spare one, could you … and a light?’ The driver was a smoker. Discovering only three left in his box, and feeling sorry for me, he gave me the box, and a book of matches.

Gregory had returned to the Manse while I was identifying Edgar. The three of us, him, me and Sophia, didn’t go to bed until well after midnight. Neither Gregory nor I fancied digging a grave for Edgar. We decided that when his body came home we would put it in the cellar with Father, temporarily, until we had a better idea. My plan, to burn down the Manse, was set to one side. I didn’t mind burning down the Manse with Father still inside. But not Edgar.

‘Well then, slimeball,’ said Gregory to Slimeball – presumably me, since he looked at me as he said it, ‘that’s the end of Edgar. I can’t say I’ll miss the poor blockhead; I hadn’t seen him for years.’

‘The police will be here again,’ I said.

‘Why should they be?’

‘They told me they had to ask some questions. It’s their investigation of the accident.’

‘I’ll take myself off for a week or so, then. As from tonight. No use—’

‘No you bloody won’t, Gregory.’ He was shocked, and perhaps a touch impressed by my ferocity. ‘They’ll be here tomorrow, and Farmer Barry’s bringing Edgar home tomorrow; I phoned him from the mortuary. You’re older than me and Sophia and you’ve a duty to play the role Father would have played. Mother isn’t able.’

‘Stiff types in uniforms make me uneasy.’

‘Tough luck,’ I said. ‘It’s your job to speak to them.’

‘Frankly, slimeball, I’d rather not.’

‘You want me to do the talking.’

He grinned.

I would make a better job of talking to the police. I agreed to do it. ‘You’d probably say something stupid and cock it up.’ Gregory didn’t deny it. ‘I’ll talk to the police tomorrow and you can break the news to Mother. Don’t be your usual dickhead self; break it gently.’

Gregory, Sophia and I entered Mother’s bedroom. She had been dozing, but turned her head when the door creaked.

Gregory couldn’t find his tongue. Awkwardly, I said, ‘Hello, Mother. I suppose you’re wondering why we’re all here together. Gregory has something to tell you … haven’t you, Gregory?’

Sophia and I held hands.

‘Guess what,’ said Gregory, a little too cheerfully for my liking. ‘Edgar got run over by a car. He’s dead.’

On the following day, we were on our best behaviour. And sad. We were sadder than we had ever been before. Although at the centre of the scene, I felt detached from it, set to automatic, as though wound up like a clock and left to run in the constantly shifting present. No past and no future. Only now, and now and now.

It was the day Edgar returned to the Manse.

We four are standing outside with the Cold at the back door, dressed in our tattered best, watching the Lane across the courtyard: me, Sophia, Mother and Gregory in a line. We are in black, except for Mother, who is in white like a brittle stone angel. Her energy, this morning, might be one final power surge to enable her to say goodbye to the idiot child that – I believe – she loves the most.

Farmer Barry drives Edgar’s body down the Lane. We watch the top of his lorry over the hedge. We can’t see the trailer behind it or the coffin within, bumping over potholes. A police car tails the lorry. Farmer Barry has brought all kinds of things down the Lane over the years: gas canisters, bread and vegetables, sausages, and now a dead brother. Edgar is returning to his home. To his second home, really; his first home is the institution that spat him out without so much as an escort to see him safely back to the Manse. I’ve been angry with the institution, but I’m too sad to be angry now. Edgar is no more, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

This morning, Gregory senses an edginess, and is wary of me. Our relationship has flipped over. He’ll do whatever I tell him to do today. Tomorrow? Who knows?

Farmer Barry and the police car pass the dry toilet, which leans to one side more than it used to. He stops his lorry in the courtyard, and the police car stops behind it. There are two policemen inside it. They’re not the ones who brought the news of Edgar’s death; this is a different pair. Farmer Barry drops from his cab to the ground, goes to the back of his lorry to unload Edgar, but looks at the policemen through their windscreen instead. Something’s wrong.

The policemen look back at him. The passenger policeman speaks to the driver. The driver restarts his engine and backs up to give Farmer Barry space to unload Edgar’s coffin.

He’s a smaller man than he used to be, Farmer Barry, shrunk with age, but still strong and capable. He has a trolley that rises up like a melodeon when he cranks the handle. It makes getting the coffin off
easier
. While Farmer Barry is about his business, the policemen get out of their car and saunter towards us with peaked hats under their arms. The passenger, who is smaller than the driver by a head, hesitates and elbows his colleague, who looks where the passenger is looking and hesitates too. But they keep advancing until the small one meets a pothole and, with a painful yelp, twists an ankle. They reach us outside the back door, one walking and the other hobbling.

‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’ The tall one addresses Mother mainly, but his eyes flicker on the rest of us.